Drummer In the Dark (5 page)

But before Wynn could call him back a second time, his cellphone sounded. He watched Carter’s departure as he said, “Bryant.”

“Good afternoon, Congressman. Might I please ask where you will be tonight?”

The voice was male, but lilting with softness and foreign vowels. And utterly unfamiliar. “Who is this?”

“Libretto is my name. Father Libretto. I bring very best wishes from your sister.” He had the brisk cheeriness of one utterly alien to Wynn’s new world. “A newly arrived man of power such as yourself, surely you were planning to join Washington society at one place or another this evening.”

“I don’t—”

“Consider it a request for information passed by your dear sister, Sybel.”

Wynn answered numbly, “The British embassy.”

“An excellent choice. Until tonight, then.” The phone clicked dead.

5

Wednesday

C
OLIN READY logged off his main computer, a final act that occurred only when he was leaving for the day or going upstairs. One dimension of reality suspended to make room for another. Points of convergence altered across space and time. Colin hesitated a long moment, then decided there was no alternative but forward motion. He left the safety of his cubicle, padded down the long line of fluorescent caves, waved his pass at the electronic doors, and entered the maelstrom.

Once strictly a magnet for kids hunting mouse ears and Sleeping Beauty dunce caps, Orlando was now enduring ravenous expansion and the fastest service-sector growth in the United States. Many large New York companies were either relocating south or sending down their peripheral operations. The lure of cheap land and hourly wage rates sixty percent below those in the Big Apple proved too hard to resist. Schwab was the latest Wall Street defector, now running a huge campuslike operation near Winter Park and employing over two thousand people, most of them techies.

Farther south, in the former no-man’s-land between the airport and the Kissimmee sprawl, another series of collegiate buildings housed the Hayek Funds Group. With fewer than nine hundred employees, Hayek was small by Schwab standards. Yet Hayek had moved not only its ops center but the whole shooting match—funds management, bonds, derivatives, foreign exchange, international corporates, everything. The move made
Wall Street Journal
headlines for over a month, because this was the first U.S.–based hedge fund that saw no need for a substantial Wall Street presence. Some called it an indication of Hayek’s personal power, a man so good at his job that the money would follow him to Patagonia if required. Whatever the reason, Hayek was now the largest hedge fund and currency trader based south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Orlando’s recent influx of computer-driven companies had resulted in a sudden dearth of specialists. High-tech headhunters swooped about like vultures over roadkill. Salaries had risen. The search had moved farther afield, then farther still. Which was how Colin came to be there at all.

The Hayek Group’s trading room floor was a windowless box, three-quarters of an acre in size. Three hundred desks. Two glassed-in balconies. The wall clocks now read a half hour past Wall Street’s closing bell, and the place stank of tension and money and deodorant-tainted sweat. Couriers scurried. Traders shouted and gestured and cursed and attacked their boards. The room was littered with paper shreds, remnants of that day’s kills. Normally Colin fed upon the floor’s energy. The buzz, as much as the money, was why he stayed around. The trading room was an incredible high, like working inside a war zone without the flak. At least, it had been so before his personal universe had tracked upon a dark and deadly orbit.

Eyes followed Colin’s progress along the back of the trading room floor. He was an enigma, the techie granted access both to the floor and the people upstairs. He was called upon whenever traders’ hardware glitched and was almost always able to offer a quick solution. He was known to be soft-spoken, almost apparition-like, and available when needed. One day he had simply appeared out of nowhere; the next he was indispensable. And that accent. One moment southern, the next foreign as warm red beer.

Colin entered the elevator and used his pass to access the penthouse. In truth, Hayek’s offer had rescued him from the dicey realm of gray-market e-theft, scamming money as a sometime game designer, but mostly living for the forbidden rush.

Colin Ready was a white-hat programmer, a former hacker now working for the people he had formerly sought to break and enter. Colin studied his reflection in the elevator’s polished brass doors, saw a man in his late twenties with a narrow build and smooth ageless features, a weak mouth, mousy brown hair, and the eyes of a corpse. No outward sign of techie mania. No pager, no palm-pilot, no bottle-bottom glasses. Trembling slightly now, but extreme nerves were standard in forays to the penthouse.

Colin entered Hayek’s outer office and squinted against the glare. His cubicle was two rows removed from a window, and here the afternoon light branded his eyeballs. The senior secretary knew him so well by now, she did not even ask if his errand was urgent. Nothing less would have brought Colin upstairs. He seated himself and waited with the suppressed tension of one who knew he was the bearer of vital data.

Colin’s father was British, his mother a true Georgia fireball. After years of legendary battles, they had finally split when Colin was eight. Which had left him spending summers in Leeds, winters wherever his mother happened to be wed that season. For years he had lived with the knowledge that he was born to solitude, his only friends fenced beyond electronic barriers of his own creation. Once there had been another, Lisa, a truly chaste woman so far as computers went. The impossible love. He had lost her earlier that spring, and now his heart lurched with a permanent limp.

“Mr. Ready?” The senior secretary was a narrow-faced woman turned old by her work, with eyes that only feigned feelings, and not well. “Mr. Hayek will see you.”

Now that he was here, now that the time had come, Colin had difficulty finding the strength to rise and cross the palatial expanse. But the secretary was holding open the twenty-foot doors. So he took a hard breath and pushed himself forward, into the inner sanctum. Mentally he reviewed the array of armaments he had prepared for just this moment. The warrior ready to battle giants and win the invisible prize.

The chairman was seated at his polished boardroom table. To enter the conference alcove meant crossing two silk Isfahans and passing the boat-sized stinkwood desk, the pair of Monet oils, and the bronze Rodin nymph dancing by the corner silk sofa set. The alcove was separated from the office proper by sliding shoji screens with frames not of paper but mother-of-pearl. The conference area itself had glass walls with lakes and green beyond. Computer screens shone everywhere, silent projectors positioned so that wherever the chairman sat, all he had to do was glance up and instantly be fed the market’s constant spew.

Colin stood by the alcove entrance, waiting for the chairman to look up and motion him forward. The atmosphere was more subdued than the trading floor itself, yet far more intense. Around the table sat a group from the trading floor, including Eric, the closest Colin had to a friend among the traders. They circled the paper-stacked table like sated pumas around a fresh kill.

Pavel Hayek himself was not attractive, but his visceral power was so obvious the man’s physical attributes meant almost nothing. Today he wore a double-breasted blue blazer with the fancy crest on his pocket. The chairman was a trim late fifties, with even features, softly accented English, and perfect grooming. His gold ring matched the crest on the doors and the wall behind Colin, a crowned phoenix rising from burning brands. Colin had done some checking on Hayek, as much as he dared. Enough to know the man’s rumored royal heritage was genuine. The guy actually was a prince. Which meant he lived up to his nickname, the King, in more ways than one. At least, that was what most people called him around here. It was only beyond the Hayek compound that one heard his other nickname, Elvis. No one doing business with Hayek dared use it, even in jest.

“A half-billion dollars in new long-term capital is a big mouthful.” This from Alex, the firm’s senior foreign exchange trader. “How much time do we have to lay it out?”

“Not long.” Hayek was very tight with his words, measuring them like gold. The man was known for having no capacity for small talk. None. “A few days at most. And directed exclusively at the foreign exchange markets.”

“You want us to lay out half a big one, only in forex derivatives?”

“That is correct.”

Alex had a trader’s ability for rapid assessments. “You want to make the market sit up and take notice, is that it?”

Hayek seemed pleased by the appraisal, but said merely, “This could be the beginning of a very large fresh inflow.”

“How big?”

“Large enough for us to consider establishing a second fund.” He stifled further comment with one upraised hand. “That we shall leave for later. Thank you all.”

Hayek waited for the minions to depart. Only Jim Burke, Hayek’s second in command remained behind. Hayek did not invite Colin to sit. “Yes?”

“Someone is hunting again. I thought you would want to know.”

“Hunting?”

“Using Congressman Hutchings’ data, apparently. Asking the same kind of questions.”

King and courtier exchanged a silent communication before Hayek demanded, “You are certain of this?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how.”

“I inserted a target, a source any new hunter would go after. They’d have no choice but to reveal themselves in the process.”

“You are referring to the internet?”

“The web. Yes.”

“Go on.”

“The site automatically inserts a rogue program into the hunter’s computer system. I can then go in and search for data.”

The chairman asked his senior man, “Do you understand what he just said?”

Jim Burke was both a trader and a nerd, a serious combination. He was also, in the eyes of those who worked for Hayek, a walking fruitloop. There was a lot of personal weirdness within the hedge fund world. The business routinely attracted those with meager people skills. But Jim Burke took this infirmity far beyond any logical boundaries. Among the Hayek force, Jim Burke was known as the Unabomber.

Burke replied, “I think so, yes.”

Colin held out a sheet, despising the revealed tremors. “This is from my initial scan.”

Burke reached forward. “I’ll take that.”

The chairman waited as his squire surveyed the paper. Burke looked up and said, “This could be a red flag.”

“Then check it out thoroughly.” Hayek turned back to Colin. “You too. Can you get back into his system?”

“Her,” Burke corrected, still scanning the data. “Apparently it’s a woman. A local. Jackie Havilland.”

Colin replied, “Every time she logs on, my insert will instruct her computer to download all new files.”

“I want to know everything.”

Colin was utterly grateful to find both the words and Hayek’s iron glare directed at his number two. Burke offered, “I’ll put the new men on this.”

“Immediately,” Hayek commanded. “This very afternoon. There is not a moment to lose.”

6

Wednesday

B
Y THE TIME Jackie returned home, clouds and the setting sun cast a pastel gauze across the sky. The windswept day was so replete and the evening so gentle, she was almost prepared to dismiss the Boatman. His bizarre tales of foreboding and mystery were just too far removed from the same old, same old.

The borderlands of Winter Park contained some of Orlando’s oldest homes. Three blocks off U.S. 50, there existed a time warp of Florida oaks and two-story wraparound verandas and squeaky sash windows. Her particular treetop haven was a former servant’s apartment set above a derelict shed. The main house was a renovator’s dream—three floors of Victorian peaks, rotting porches, and peeling paint. The owner was Millicent Kirby, a widow who probably belonged in a padded cell. But the old woman was as attached to the house and the neighborhood as Jackie, and had a terror of being sent off somewhere to rot away alone. Jackie pretended the only reason she did Millicent’s shopping and arranged for gardeners and an occasional maid was because she didn’t want new owners to cast her adrift as well.

The muscles of her upper body quivered with a satiated hunger as she unstrapped her board from the roof of her car. Her legs scarcely held her aloft as she carried her gear into the shed. The surrounding trees bade a rustling farewell both to the departing day and storm. The nightly chorus of owls and cicadas sang an invitation to stick with the tried and true, the safe, the easy.

Then she noticed the figure standing by the big house’s back window.

Jackie had never seen Millicent remain in view so long. Even the monthly housekeeper claimed to see only a flitting wild-haired figure who danced from room to room, always just out of sight. Jackie studied the motionless figure holding up the curtain so that her hyperthin frame was visible. Jackie pointed a silent question up the stairs and was granted a single nod in response.

She hefted a serrated repair knife from her tackle box, then took the outside stairs as quietly as she could. The first sight of her door hanging drunkenly on one hinge pushed a soft groan from her gut. Jackie turned back to Millicent and shouted, “Call the police!”

The woman did not move. Jackie grimaced with understanding. There was nothing the police could do if the robbers were gone, which they had to be if Millicent was still there and letting her proceed. And the old lady wanted no truck with anyone who might threaten her isolation. Police meant social services, and they would only lead to windowless confines and nurses with needles. Jackie gripped her knife tighter and entered the maelstrom.

Her place was thoroughly trashed. All the cupboards were emptied, all the remnants of her life stirred into a bitter caldron. She stepped carefully, moaning from the pain of recognizing small items, things prized by her alone. It was only when she realized much of the plastic crunching underfoot formerly belonged to her brother’s computer that she came close to breaking down. All her files were gone.

She walked downstairs, crossed the lawn, and was met by Millicent opening the back door. The gray head remained pointed determinedly downward. In all the time Jackie had lived there, Millicent had never once met her eyes. Through rage bordering on anguish, Jackie asked as gently as she could, “Did you see them?”

“Heard them first. Shouting. First inside, then when they left. Big men. Angry.”

“How many?”

“Angry men.” Millicent’s eyes tracked up and to the side, then down and away, searching for safety in a world far more insane than she would ever be. “Two first. Then another. When the third man went inside the shouting started. Bad words.”

“Would you recognize them again if you saw them?”

“Too many words for three men. But just three. First two gray men. Then one blue. I counted because I knew you’d ask.”

Jackie sighed and patted the woman’s bony shoulder. Up close Millicent smelled like her house, mildewed and ancient. “Thank you. You did just fine.”

Jackie crossed the unkempt lawn, climbed the stairs, and reentered her former haven. She spent hours searching for what had not been trashed. Nothing seemed to have been taken—no surprise there, as there was little of any real value. The intruders seemed to have been intent not upon robbery so much as mayhem. Jackie wept tears made fiery because they remained internal, as she mourned mementos of a life that had become almost a myth.

She sorted through the shredded papers until she came up with a pair of Washington names and numbers. The phone had been ripped from her wall and the tiny cellphone was missing altogether, so she walked to the corner booth to call Esther Hutchings. At least she was likely to offer a sane note, if not sympathy. The robot-voiced answering machine fitted the anonymous night. Jackie left a terse message, then dialed the second number. If this did not qualify as an emergency, nothing did.

The phone was answered before the second ring. “Yes?”

“Is this Nabil . . . I’m sorry, I can’t read your last name.”

“Who is speaking?”

“My name is Jackie Havilland.”

“This name I do not know.” The voice was male, deep, and resonated with an accent she did not recognize. Perhaps Arabic. The man also sounded very suspicious. “How did you receive this number?”

“Esther Hutchings gave it to me.”

“Ah. Then you must be the mystery woman.”

“My apartment has been broken into and everything destroyed.”

“Which proves we were right in telling Esther not to take this course. She has only increased the danger to us all.”

Whatever Jackie had been expecting, it was not this overt hostility. “Can you get a message to her, please? They stole my cellphone and tore my other from the wall.”

When she stopped, the man said impatiently, “Yes? That is your message? Then I suggest you call the phone service and not Esther.”

“Look.” She took a deep breath. It would be too easy to unload her anger on this voice. “Give me a break here, all right? I’ve just come back to a house that looks like a demolition site. I’m not thinking straight.”

A pause, then, “This I can understand. Very well. I will call Esther for you and say they came. And when you were not home they left you a warning.”

The matter-of-fact tone both unsettled and attracted her. “I need to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

Jackie searched for some question that would help uncover all the man was not saying. “Esther supplied me with typed notes annotated by hand, I assume from her husband.”

“Another grave error.”

“I need to know who made those handwritten notes. Some of them refer to people I can’t identify, and—”

“Anyone with half a brain would know the honorable gentleman would himself be writing notes on his personal documents.”

“How interesting.” Acid rose to etch her words. “Seeing as how Graham Hutchings was apparently writing with both hands, and the left-handed notes show definite feminine traits.”

The deep voice showed its first trace of hesitancy. “Feminine. Yes. A researcher and dear friend helping Graham with his work.”

“Friend, foe, or morph, I don’t care. I just want to talk with her.”

“So would I,” the voice replied mournfully. “Oh, so very much. Alas, my dear friend was there when they came with her warning. You understand what I am saying to you?”

“Not exactly.”

“My friend was caused to fall from a building in Washington. That was their warning to her. So now all our questions must be directed toward the grave.”